The headline of this week’s contribution is likely to win the competition for the best quote of the year. It was uttered in defence of an action taken which I do not agree to. Moreover, former minister Clayton Bartolo, the person who uttered this statement, and people who know me, know full well that I hold no brief for Bartolo. Yet, if we ignore the context in which this statement was made, I would say that I agree with it.
There were many who reacted negatively to what Bartolo said, mainly because they placed it in the current context. At the time, there were graduation ceremonies taking place at the university, and a statement like this would most certainly be sending the wrong message.
When I was a university student myself, we had a prime minister who had stated that certificates of degrees were nothing better that the paper in which grocers wrapped anchovies (dawk karti tal-inċnova).
I dare say that not everything is diplomas and degrees, but as Mario Thomas Vassallo, a professor at the university’s faculty of public policy said, qualifications are important because they provide the foundation. And I agree with that statement.
However, there are a number of considerations that need to be made. First, while it is true that one cannot exercise certain professions without being appropriately qualified, a qualification does not necessarily make a person suitable for that profession. While someone may know the law, a person who does not think critically cannot make a good lawyer.
Similarly, a doctor without good interpersonal relations cannot be a good doctor, and an architect who does not understand aesthetics cannot be a good architect. A manager who has good decision-making skills but is not decisive cannot be a good manager.
As such there are certain skills and qualities a person must have in order to succeed in one’s work. These include communication skills, interpersonal skills, decisiveness, emotional intelligence, self-organisation, critical thinking and others. I am not sure from where a person is expected to acquire such skills and qualities, but the possession of a qualification does not mean a person has them.
This brings me to the second consideration. The knowledge one receives during the process of formal education may eventually either become obsolete or will be accessible on the internet. Therefore, the learning process should never stop. Learning requires the right disposition for it to happen. Such a disposition is not provided by a formal qualification, but is an absolute necessity. Without such an openness to continue learning throughout life, a degree or diploma certificate becomes simply a record that a person has passed an exam at a particular moment in time.
The knowledge one receives during the process of formal education may eventually either become obsolete or will be accessible on the internet
The third consideration is that we have certain jobs − and these are likely to increase in the coming years − which will become obsolete, thanks to developments in technology, changes in society, new discoveries. No degree or diploma will make such jobs relevant forever.
On the other hand, new jobs are being created and will be created, for which no formal qualification exists today. For example, when Malta embarked on its policy to develop the financial services sector, no degrees were being offered locally in this area.
Fourth, there will always be individuals who have the skills and qualities required for the job but can never have the appropriate qualifications. This is because the education system would have failed them and dropped them by the wayside. I am specifically referring to neurodiverse persons and those with physical and mental disability. These are two groups of people who are very different from each other, but if degrees and diplomas were everything, then such persons can never make it.
In effect, my conclusion is that degrees and diplomas are very important as they provide a foundation, but they do not provide a foundation for everything.
The assertion that degrees and diplomas are everything could imply that persons who do not possess a degree or a diploma are second-rate citizens. This is not such an outrageous conclusion as it may sound, because we have had policy statements and decisions that showed clearly that this is what people who have made such statements and decisions actually believe in.